Duffs face rivals for McPier contract

The agency that manages McCormick Place and Navy Pier plans to seek competitive bids for janitorial service rather than extend a multimillion-dollar agreement with a controversial cleaning firm.

Windy City Maintenance, which has taken in $50.7 million from the janitorial contract in the past five years, is run by the politically connected Duff family. The Tribune has reported that federal authorities are investigating whether the Duffs violated labor laws and defrauded a Chicago program intended to benefit minorities and women.

Directors of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority voted Wednesday to seek competitive bids to make sure the agency is paying a reasonable price for cleaning services and not because of any alleged misconduct by the Duffs, officials said.

"At this point, all there are are allegations," said board chairman Kelly Welsh.

Board members also took action on another high-profile contract, awarding a five-year food service agreement at McCormick Place worth about $120 million to Chicago-based Levy Restaurants. Levy, which has held the pact since 1991 in a partnership with minority vendors Tim and Everett Rand, was among four groups vying for the business.

The authority said it would conduct a formal review of Levy's performance after 30 months.

A vote on the janitorial contract had been stalled since April, when staff members praised Windy City's work and recommended that it get a three-year contract extension. Instead, the board decided to survey cleaning costs at other convention centers.

On Wednesday, citing difficulties in determining janitorial costs elsewhere, the board members extended Windy City's contract through February to give the agency time to solicit bids. James Streicker, an attorney for the Duffs, had no immediate comment on whether Windy City plans to bid on the new contract.

The Tribune reported in 1999 that Windy City had reaped tens of millions of dollars as a woman-owned business even though it was run by the men in the Duff family, some of whom have connections to organized crime. The Duffs have held fundraisers for Mayor Richard Daley and provided campaign workers for Daley-backed candidates.

The Duffs also control a union known as Liquor and Wine Sales Representatives, Warehousemen, Clerical, Distillery, Rectifying, Tire, Plastic and Allied Workers Union Local 3. The Tribune investigation showed that a separate day-labor company run by the Duffs was undermining the union by providing cheap, non-union labor to the city's major liquor distributors.

After the disclosures, the city concluded that Windy City had improperly claimed it was controlled by a woman, and the firm became ineligible for about $1 million in contracts under the city's minority set-aside program. Windy City has lost other city business in the past year, including janitorial work at the Harold Washington Library and the International Terminal at O'Hare International Airport.

Remedial Environmental Manpower, a company founded by the Duffs and now run by one of their associates, still holds a lucrative garbage-sorting subcontract as part of the city's Blue Bag recycling program.

Windy City won the janitorial contract at McCormick Place and Navy Pier in 1996, after an unusual bidding process. Three rivals initially submitted lower bids. But after all the finalists met with authority officials and revised their proposals, Windy City became the low bidder.

The company actually was paid $10.6 million the first year--nearly $4 million more than its winning proposal. Last year its bill came to $11.3 million.

In other action, the board also voted to install 62 defibrillators at McCormick Place, replacing three machines that had been in use. Such lifesaving devices, which deliver an electric shock that restarts a heart in cardiac arrest, already have been installed in other public sites, including O'Hare and Midway Airports.

Authority officials said the defibrillators will cost $3,000 each and will be within a two-minute walk of any point in the complex, making them readily available in emergencies.